the sparrows of banality immediately peck away any seed that falls into it (cf. Mk 4:1–9). For us Christians, these words are a promise of Jesus Christ, in whom the Word of God really penetrated the earth and became bread for us all. He is the seed that bears fruit through the centuries, the fruitful answer in which God’s speech has taken living root in this world. The mystery of Christ is almost nowhere so palpable and intimately connected with the mystery of Mary as in the perspective of this promise.